Right now you can commit crimes on gold and higher without xhelp.
But there is literally no documentation of how.
Do I pull a weapon on the dude in techtronics and say give me all your money?! And hope the npc responds to me and I don’t just get a bunch of judges running in shooting me?
Read the first few lines of the post. Your proposed scenario is obviously major ambient population + an individual who needs a chance to respond + a violent act which easily could move into assault.
Which is to say, as mentioned in that thread you can engage in certain crimes topside without xhelping first, but that doesn't mean you're told you can get away with X, Y and Z IC.
As far as what you can mechanically do, NPCs and PCs all work the same when it comes to command verbs, but I would be read over help farming and help npcs to avoid getting into OOC issues. IC issues are up to your character to resolve.
